


i know who you are now

by Splat_Dragon



Series: Whumptober 2020 [9]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: #12, 12, Arthur Whump, Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow (Red Dead Redemption 2), Day 12, Hurt No Comfort, I think I've broken something, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, No. 12, Past Child Abuse, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, broken trust, fuck lyle morgan, no.12, prompt 12, whumptober2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26962270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splat_Dragon/pseuds/Splat_Dragon
Summary: Whumptober 2020, #12: I Think I've Broken Something: Broken TrustDutch didn’t even realize what he’d done until his hand started to sting.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945801
Comments: 3
Kudos: 109
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	i know who you are now

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Broken Promises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903351) by [Arwriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arwriter/pseuds/Arwriter). 



###  _i know who you are now_  
~Dear Wormwood, Oh Hellos

Dutch didn’t even realize what he’d done until his hand started to sting.

Arthur hadn’t braced himself. Hadn’t even realized he’d _needed_ to.

It had been over twenty years since he’d been struck. Well, that wasn’t accurate. Twenty years since he’d been struck by someone he considered family. Struck by a father.

  
  


Dutch had struck him once, when he’d been eighteen and stupid. None of them remember _why_ \- but he’d been _terrified,_ if his Pa, some two-bit outlaw, could near put him in the ground, what the hell could these two outlaws do to him?

Nothing, as it turns out. Dutch had been horrified, had apologized. Hosea had gone from furious at Arthur to apoplectic at Dutch when he’d seen how scared Arthur had been but, even then, it had taken them well over a month to find him - he’d snuck out that night, fled for the nearby town and then kept going, expecting it to be a trick, like his father sometimes played. “It’s fine, son,” he’d say then, a day or two later, he’d get a hiding that would keep him bed-bound for days.

After that, they’d never dared lay a hand on him again.

  
  


Arthur was on the ground.

Stretched out on his side, unmoving from where the blow had knocked him down. He’d not hit him hard enough to truly knock him down - the surprise had done that. Some deep down knowledge—

_‘you fight back, you get it worse’_

_—_ making him roll with it, dropping down.

Dutch’s hand hung in the air, stuck where it had struck his boy.

The sound hadn’t even stopped ringing, and already he’d forgotten what had angered him so. The anger had already left him, sheer _horror_ boiling in his stomach instead, staring at his son, unmoving, on the ground, hand cradling his cheek, blue eyes wide and focused on some far off point—

_‘don’t look him in the eye, it’ll just make him madder.’_

—blood dripped from his ring.

“Arthur.” was all he could manage, his throat tight.

Twenty years.

_“You’re… but I…”_

_“We don’t hit boys.”_

“I’m sorry.” even to Dutch himself, it rang hollow. He _was_ sorry - was _horrified,_ even more-so when Arthur slowly removed his hand, propping himself up on the ground, blood trickling from tiny cuts made by his rings, face already darkening in a bruise, but he could never apologize enough for what he’d just done.

_“I don’t understand.”_

_“You could never do_ anything _to deserve that.”_

_“Promise?”_

_“Swear it.”_

  
  


He still, twenty years later, had nightmares of chasing Arthur off. Of waking up to Hosea yelling _“Dutch! Arthur’s gone!”_ of rushing out to find the boy’s mare gone, his tent stripped of anything that the boy had gotten for himself without their help. Of thinking he’d been lost to them for a _month,_ had nightmares of finding him dead in a ditch or hanging at the end of a rope, though they’d found him sleeping in an alleyway with a hound he’d named Copper.

  
  


“It’s fine, Dutch.”

Arthur’s voice was so quiet Dutch barely heard it over the ringing that had set into his own as of late. Dull and blank - a safe tone, placating.

“No… Arthur, please. Look at me.”

Blood dripped to the ground as Arthur raised his head, moving no other part of his body, and Dutch’s eyes burned. Arthur’s were glazed, blank, and even still he looked somewhere just up of Dutch’s eyes, staring at his forehead instead of meeting his gaze.

“It’s not… I’m so sorry, son.”

Arthur flinched and, Dutch’s eyes _burned,_ but tears refused to fall. Dutch’s breath caught in his chest when, kneeling and offering a hand, “Get up, Arthur,” he cowered, all six-feet of him curling in on himself like a child, as though he expected another blow.

_‘What have I done?’_

  
  


Arthur dreamed of Lyle that night. Of being all of five years old, his mother only just cooling in the ground, Lyle raging above him. And every time, Lyle’s hair, Lyle’s eyes, would darken, and then it would be Dutch standing there, Hosea fresh in the ground.


End file.
